Dec. 1894.] 



FRUIT FARMING. 



149 



Classification of fruit, or " grading " as the Americans say, is 

 also eminently requisite. It will not answer in these days to pack 

 fruit just as it comes from the tree, or bush, into dirty baskets 

 covered with damp rubbishy grass or straw, and consign it to 

 markets to compete with the carefully assorted well j^acked fruit 

 from abroad. Nor is it advisable, in seasons of great abundance, 

 to continue to make consignments of fruit to glutted markets. 

 In practice, it may be said, it is difficult to avoid this, but fruit 

 suitable for conversion into jam may be made into pulp without 

 much trouble or expense. Upon large fruit farms ic would seem 

 to be almost essential to provide apparatus for the conversion 

 into jam of surplus, small, or over ripe fruit, and also for bottling 

 and preserving fruit in various ways. When the; fruit has been 

 previously made into pulp, the subsequent process of jam manu- 

 facture may be carried on at slack times. 



Fruit drying, as practised by American, Canadian, French, 

 German, and Australasian fruit growers, is another means of 

 utilising surplus fruit that could be adopted cheaply aod easily 

 in this country. Portable and inexpensive fruit drying machines 

 can be obtained of various sizes to suit large and small holdings. 



These drying machines are constantly used by a large number 

 of American fruit-fanners on small as well as on large farms. 

 In the plum-growing districts of France and Germany, when 

 prices are low for fresh fruit, considerable quantities of plums 

 are dried and exported as prunes. 



A. large proportion of fruit farmers send their apples and 

 pears direct from the trees to the market, and sell them for 

 whatever they will fetch. Much of the fruit is immature and 

 requires to be stored, and as the sale is forced, fine fruit is often 

 sacrificed at miserably low rates, for" smashing " or for culinary 

 purposes. Consumers have not the inclination nor the accom- 

 modation for storing, but merely buy from hand to mouth. The 

 obvious policy of the producers should be, therefore, to store the 

 choice keeping sorts, and to supply the demand from day to day 

 with seasonable, ripe, well coloured, fine flavoured fruit. There 

 is almost invariably a great demand for fine eating and cooking 

 apples after Christmas, because much of the crop has been 

 sacrificed long before the fruit was ripe. 



Fruit-farmers can, of their own initiative, carry out such 

 suggestions as those described above. But there are other serious 

 hindrances to the increase and development of fruit growing with 

 which they cannot so easily deal. Among these may be mentioned 

 the inadequacy of existing means and modes of distribution, 

 and, as in most other articles produced by cultivators of the 

 land, the absence of direct communication between the producers 

 and the consumers. 



Fruit-farmers, as a rule, consign the whole of their fruit to 

 the nearest central fruit-market without any regard to the state 

 of supply and demand. To some extent it may be said this i-s 

 unavoidable in the case of " soft " fruit, which must be sold as it 



